


Though you try to drown him I can hear him singing.

by PepperCat



Series: The Secret History of Hartley Rathaway [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Loneliness, Pets, Rats, after s01e11, animal injury, before s01e16, peculiar coping strategies, rat bites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7517617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hartley Rathaway is not being unreasonable, and certainly not projecting.</p><p>Follows from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6358723">I Came Here For You</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though you try to drown him I can hear him singing.

Caitlin would have known what to do. He couldn't imagine calling her to ask, even when they'd been on the best of terms (which still hadn't been that warm), but she would have known.

He'd been outside-- not _really_ outside, not leaving the weed-studded patch of dead earth that aproned the safehouse, but sitting on the front steps in the blue pre-dawn light. Snart's casual instruction to stay put had probably been more of a general guideline than a strict rule, but after the impression he'd made at the Rathaway mansion, he felt like he needed a reason to disobey it.

It had been a while since he'd had to put up with doing what he was told for someone else's convenience.

The rat that was the closest thing he had to a roommate--neither of them had any real claim on the house, but he'd been staying between its walls and the rat had been staying inside its walls, so close enough--had come out as well, although around the side of the house. He could hear the soft _tup_ of its paws, and the light slither of its tail. He hadn't come outside to listen to it, but hearing it wander around unconcerned made him feel less jittery.

Then the screaming had started.

He'd bolted around the corner and seen a small furious tangle of fur and squalling, a cat doubling up to sink claws into the rat, and he wasn't actually sure if he would have kicked it or not, but it was a moot point; the rat had started limp-scrabbling towards him in blind terror, the cat bolted to follow it, and Hartley ended up tripping over the goddamn thing.

By the time he got his breath back the rat had managed to wedge itself into a crumble in the house's foundation; by the time he rolled over and sat up, the cat was irritably grooming itself at the edge of the sidewalk.

Hartley dusted grit and mud off his aching hands and glared at it, which made as much impression as he'd expected. It trotted off, and he turned his attention to the rat. It wasn't screaming anymore, but as his eyes adjusted, he could see blood streaked along the concrete where it had been scuttling.

Dammit. He took a couple of steps towards it, then crouched down.

The rat squashed itself further back into the divot in the foundation and hissed at him; even to his ears it sounded like a leaf blowing over grass, light and thin and breathless. It was bleeding, but it wasn't unconscious, and it...

He had no idea if it was dying or not; it had dragged itself backwards into a tiny trembling lump barely the size of his fist (if he could have made one right now, which he couldn't), and there was blood smeared along the wall to its side. He couldn't see anything wrong with it _except_ bloody gouges, though, and maybe that was the kind of thing you could fix? Hypothetically?

There didn't seem to be a lot of blood. Although any noticeable amount might be a lot for a rat. And it was still conscious.

Stupid animal.

Caitlin would have been able to tell him _something_. Even if it was just _Hartley, you're unreasonably over-invested in this, be sensible._ Caitlin was pragmatic about things.

The thin, terrified hissing.

If he couldn't fix it, he guessed he could at least put it out of its misery. _Something._

It sounded so scared. He'd heard its heartbeat before and he hadn't paid a lot of attention, but he thought it was going faster. And its breath was whipsawing in and out, a wet high sound, its side working like bellows.

He crouched down and reached forward to pick it up, and it screamed.

* * *

The bite--bites? the rat had lunged at him and sunk its teeth in more than once, but the gouges were all clustered near each other--were clustered around his thumb and the soft meat between his thumb and index finger of his right hand. He cleaned them, but his hands were stiff and bruised, and he couldn't swear to how good a job he'd done.

He'd dealt with worse.

...it _really_ would have been nice to be able to talk to Caitlin.

Typing, since one of his hands was wrapped in gauze and hurt to move, took longer than he'd hoped. On the plus side, by the time he was done looking up what he needed and finding a banking system where he could kick the emergency cash service until it spat out a security code, the place he needed to visit was open.

Taking care of a rat problem--well, a rat-related problem, or the aftereffects of dealing with one--was a perfectly reasonable excuse for leaving the house. And it was ridiculously early; no-one was going to come by at dawn.

Hartley still left a note.

* * *

The clinic smelled of several things. Hartley focussed on the disinfectant and sat patiently waiting, holding his phone in his left hand but too tired to scroll through it.

At least he wasn't dripping on the floor. The bite wound had crusted over a couple of hours ago.

Eventually, they called the name he'd given and sent him to one of the waiting rooms. The doctor who came in was tired, stout, and unimpressed. The cleaning probably wouldn't have hurt so much if his hand hadn't still been so badly bruised. Hartley bit back everything he felt like saying and stored it up for later, to be edited and sharpened and refined. It wasn't so much _l'esprit de l'escalier_ as pre-emptive planning for next time.

Hopefully there wasn't going to be a next time. It hurt. Rather ridiculously badly, given how small the injuries were.

"How exactly did this happen?"

"I was helping with cleaning out my friend's basement and I must have startled it."

"And the bruising?"

 _I turned my gloves up to eleven and brought a quarter of my ancestral home down like I was blowing the trumpets at Jericho._ "A bookshelf fell on my hands a couple of days ago," he said.

The doctor gave him a flatly unimpressed look. "A bookshelf."

"I was helping my friend carry it out of the basement and it slipped. My friend is very clumsy," Hartley said with a straight face.

"Your friend sounds charming."

"That's probably how he convinced me to keep helping after the bookshelf incident."

She gave him an I-am-not-fooled-and-you-are-not-worth-arguing-with look. "When were you bitten?"

Hartley glanced up, but there wasn't a clock on the wall. "Maybe five hours ago?"

"You and your friend got an early start." _Dammit_. Oh well, she hadn't believed him anyway. The doctor began stitching. "When did you get here?"

"About an hour ago." The unimpressed look returned. "I had something to-- I didn't--" Hartley sighed. "I thought the delay might not be a problem. I'm sorry."

Hartley left with a lecture, a recommendation for over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, a warning to come back if there was any trace of a fever or a rash, and a timeline for the stitches to come out. Also advice to get his friend to buy him a pair of work gloves if he was going to keep helping, which he shouldn't do.

He walked back to the house. He didn't really want the time to think, but he hoped that it'd help him get tired enough to sleep.

* * *

The cage that he'd (painfully) set up before going to the clinic was sitting in the living room, kitty-corner to the couch. There was a towel inside it, and a ridiculously small heating pad that was definitely supposed to be enough, and a water bottle _and_ a dish--he wasn't sure how long it'd take her to figure out the bottle, or if wild rats knew how they worked, or if it'd be comfortable for her to use with the injuries to her side and leg--and a small cardboard box turned upside-down inside it, with a hole torn in one of the sides. You weren't supposed to bother rats if they were hiding, or try to pick them up; apparently they needed a space where they could feel secure and unbothered. The vet had assured him that she'd come out to eat.

He didn't need to give her any of the vet's prescriptions yet, so Hartley sat down on the floor next to the cage, his back to the wall. He pulled his knees up towards himself and looped his arms around them, and just settled there. Couldn't think of anything else he needed to do right then, but he'd gotten something done.

Managed to do even more damage to his hands, and at least one vet and one rat in Central thought he was losing his mind, but he'd gotten something done.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. His voice bounced back a little from the walls; not the sort of thing he'd ever have noticed before. Outside the blinds, he could hear cars driving down nearby streets, and wind dragging trash down the sidewalk, and someone playing music maybe a block over; inside it was dim and a little cool, and very still. "I know you're scared. I'm--"

Not scared. Not really. Not feeling like he could go anywhere and not knowing what he'd do next if he could and not being entirely _reasonable_ about the rat, maybe--and that last was a little disquieting so he wasn't thinking about it too hard--but not _scared_. That was ridiculous.

"I'm doing the best I can, alright?"

He heard the rat breathing. It didn't come out.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is extracted (rather than quoted properly) from Margaret Atwood's 1974 poem "Rat Song", which you can read [here](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=123&issue=5&page=7) (although I don't believe the page is screenreader compatible, so drop me a note if you'd like a transcription?). The imagery of a rat seeing another rat hiding behind/inside a human intrigues me, and a lot of the language in the poem itself strikes me as applicable to Hartley as well as to the rat it's about.
> 
> It is a small, defiant, fierce, despised, lonely poem. I feel it suits.


End file.
